


behind that locked door

by floweryfran



Series: and i knew for sure (i was loved) [8]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: dissociation and selective mutism, i finally wrote it bc i was down in the dumps, like who sat down and said that’s a good name, this was a tumblr request, tony is feral and peter is angry and sad, we’re projecting tonight boys, who NAMED ferris bueller i need to have a chat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:00:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24383944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floweryfran/pseuds/floweryfran
Summary: He’s snapping one of MJ’s hair ties against the inside of his wrist. It’s supposed to make him come back into his body. It isn’t working. It feels like he’s up there bobbing on the breeze from the ceiling fan. Like suspension as a concept is tenuous and there is no webbing and Peter has been freefalling for ages and he still can’t see the ground.He’d rather splat. He’d rather hit the dirt, guts and grime and all, than keep hovering.Johnny is off doing alien shit. MJ has an internship. May is on a shift. Ned hasn’t answered his texts.There’s nothing holding him here.It’s all too easy to let go.or, everything is ass and tony comes over to try and make it suck less
Relationships: May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: and i knew for sure (i was loved) [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1722340
Comments: 75
Kudos: 323





	behind that locked door

**Author's Note:**

> deals with dissociation and selective mutism, if that bothers you! just a warning!

Peter doesn’t mean to be doing it. 

It’s just that he’s been laying flat atop his sheets for almost two hours now, letting the idle spin of the white ceiling fan raise chills on his legs where they jab out of his too-loose boxers. 

He’s got an incessant humming at the back of his neck though the rest of him is cavernous and cool. His eyes hurt. He can’t sleep. 

He’s snapping one of MJ’s hair ties against the inside of his wrist. It’s supposed to make him come back into his body. It isn’t working. It feels like he’s up there bobbing on the breeze from the fan. Like suspension as a concept is tenuous and there is no webbing and Peter has been freefalling for ages and he still can’t see the ground. 

He’d rather splat. He’d rather hit the dirt, guts and grime and all, than keep hovering. 

Johnny is off doing alien shit. MJ has an internship. May is on a shift. Ned hasn’t answered his texts. 

There’s nothing holding him here.

It’s all too easy to let go. 

Peter’s vision slips out of focus. 

Time moves like ribbon curls and spilled honey; like sanded wood planks and fingerprints smudged on window panes; like the starchy water left after boiling potatoes and wet ink bleeding across the page. 

It is all angles and plains and endless fields of undulating wheat, and then it isn’t. 

Focus is painfully sharp. He immediately wants to retreat back into himself. 

There’s a warm hand on his wrist. Peter fumbles the hair tie. It snaps onto fingers that are not his, rather than the thin skin over his palm. 

“Stop that,” says Tony’s gruff voice, “quit it, kid, stop.”

Peter blinks. He turns towards Tony. He doesn’t know why Tony is in his apartment. 

“School called,” Tony says, as if he reads minds. “You didn’t show up. They called May, and she called me to come and check on you since her shift isn’t up until twelve.”

Peter looks idly at Tony. 

Tony’s hand skims over Peter’s forehead so lightly that Peter isn’t sure it happened. Peter thinks Tony’s palm is shaking. Peter thinks Tony’s eyes look heavy. 

“One of those days?” Tony says. 

Peter breathes. Somewhere inside his chest the answer is pulsating—it’s grabbing onto his ribs and rattling them like prison bars—but nothing. Nothing rises to his mouth. 

Something, some great and primordial It, stoppers his throat, makes him stupid. Helpless. He fucking hates being helpless. All he does is try not to be. 

He closes his eyes when his lower lip trembles. His throat is painfully tight. He hates feeling like this. He doesn’t get it. Nothing happened. Why does he feel like he’s sunk a foot into the foam of his mattress. 

“Alright,” Tony says. “Hey, okay, I’m here now. We can fix this. I know we can. You know the first step? Because I do and I’m willing to share my answer with the class. Here it is: sit up. That’s the first thing. That’s always the first step. Come on, up, let’s sit up.”

Tony’s hand squeezes Peter’s shoulder three times, fast. Peter pushes himself up. He must. Because he’s sitting. His elbows feel strange. Too big. Too bendy. 

“Hey, look at that,” says Tony. “You nailed it. Olympic gold worthy. I’ll contact the YMCA. You need a minute? Let’s take a minute. Step one, done. You earned a minute, I’m—here, scoot. Move that leg, I’m coming in hot like a mofo. Do the kids say that? I think I heard it on a TV show once and, frankly, it baffled me.”

Tony wedges himself onto Peter’s mattress and leans back against the headboard. 

Peter looks at him, all decked in a massive hoodie and ratty sweatpants. His face is strange and blurry. Warped like he’s watching the bottom of a swimming pool writhe. Peter feels like he doesn’t recognize Tony. Peter feels like he would recognize Tony blind and backwards and upside down. He does not understand this feeling. It’s infuriating. He wants to reach down his throat and into his chest and pull it out like those clown napkins neatly tied in brightly-colored knots. 

Tony sighs, settling against Peter’s pillows. 

He gives a good show. As if this is normal. Any of this at all. 

Tony turns his head towards Peter, then pats Peter’s cold kneecap. 

He turns away again. 

Peter thinks that if some magic spell could summon from his chest the sound that has been pushed so deep it would never otherwise be heard, it would be a guttural, fractured scream. 

His finger loops around the hair tie. 

Before he can snap it, Tony’s hand stops him. Cuffs around Peter’s wrist, all calluses and divots and swirled prints. 

Peter can feel every rise and fall against his skin. 

“How are we doing during our little interlude?” Tony says. “More interlude? Less interlude? Terminated interlude? All of the above are fine. Just keep me updated. A memo on my desk will suffice.”

Peter clenches his jaw. 

“Oh, he’s mad. Okay. I can give you time. How about the next step for today is a shower? You look like you’re fucking freezing. Go take a warm shower. I’ll do that fancy thoughtful thing where I throw a towel in the dryer for you so it’s all toasty when you get out. Remember to wash behind your ears and everything.”

Tony slides off the mattress and stands beside it. He stares at Peter, open, patient. 

Peter pushes himself off the mattress. The floor beneath his feet feels like a memory. 

Tony says, “Hey, look at you! Nice. We’re making shit happen, folks. Into the bathroom with you, young one. Throw your towel out the door. I’ll go fix it up nice.”

Peter follows the instructions at half-pace. 

In the shower, he finds himself sitting under the stream. He does not remember why he sat. He doesn’t feel lightheaded. Or nauseous. Or anything else at all. 

He finds his footing. Stands. Soaps himself. 

The garbled sound of the water calms him, even if he feels matted eight layers deep. 

When he gets out, the towel is waiting beside a stack of his clothes. All of them are warmed. 

He gets dressed and pads out of the bathroom. 

Tony is standing at the stove. He’s cooking something. Peter cannot tell what it is. 

Tony snorts. “You tuck your sweatpants into your socks? God, I shouldn’t be surprised. You do seem like the sock-tucking type. I bet you single-cuff your jeans or something. Fold your underwear in thirds. Hang your sweaters.”

The worst thing is that Peter has the comeback ready. _Like a normal person?_ he wants to say. _Like a normal person?_ sits on the back of his tongue. He can’t say the words. Neurotypical who? Not him. 

God, even joking in his own freaking head sounds discordant. 

Peter pushes himself up onto the counter and sits, legs dangling. 

Tony continues to cook. Every once in a while, Tony will start to hum, then stop. He’ll get halfway into a verse and then quit as if he forgets the words. 

Peter cannot pick up a single melody. 

Tony is rather suddenly before him, plate in hand. It’s laden with eggs and turkey sausage. Two slices of toast. A peeled orange. 

Tony peeled an orange without Peter noticing. Without smelling, even. 

Peter takes the plate. It wavers in his hands but he rights it. 

Tony does not begin to clean the cookware until Peter has stabbed a sausage with his fork and begun to chew it. 

His mouth feels like it’s full of glue. His whole existence is a cotton ball. Fucking Christ. He’s so tired of feeling like this. 

The next time Tony taps him, it’s on the elbow. 

Peter starts. 

Tony catches his plate before it can slip off his lap. 

Tony taps Peter’s temple twice. “You’ve been—out there for a while. That place I can’t follow you. Food is getting cold. I expect it all to be finished. I know I’m the cool parent but I will not budge on this one.”

Peter stares. 

“I know,” Tony says, voice breaking. “God, I know, Pete. It’s okay. Just some breakfast. It’s fine. You can do that, I know you can.”

Peter knows he can too. He knows he can, and he’s pissed because he feels like the crater punched into the earth’s crust that wiped out the dinosaurs, all smoking and empty and awful. He can finish a plate of fucking eggs. Toast. He loves oranges. He can do this. 

It feels like he can’t. It feels like an undertaking. The epic sort. 

He grits his teeth, stabs a chunk of egg, and does it. It’s like pulling himself along by the ends of his nails, but on the inside. 

When he’s finished, he feels sick rather than bolstered. 

But Tony takes his plate, grinning, and washes it for him. Whistling from between his teeth, now. 

Peter’s finger hooks the hair tie. He knows that if he snaps it hard enough he’ll come back. 

He does it once, twice. Nothing. He hears the slap against his skin. It feels like nothing more than a pinch. 

“Hey, stop that,” Tony says, hands wet and sudsy as he takes the tie off Peter’s wrist. 

Peter blinks at his skin. It’s mottled red, lightly bruised. He hadn’t realized. 

It was supposed to fix him. 

“I’m keeping this. I’ll personally give it back to Michelle. This isn’t May’s. It’s not May’s, right? She only uses scrunchies. She’s a child of the flowers, bless her hippie heart. Okay. Pocketing it. Let me finish the dishes. I need May to love me. Okay. Be right back.”

Tony pats Peter’s knee before he goes. 

Peter watches the wet spot from Tony’s hand grow on the fabric of his sweats. 

Tony brings him to the couch. The couch is not big. It is deep and too soft and sometimes, if you sit wrong, you get a butthole piercing from the springs. 

Tony wraps him in a blanket. And then another. One is a quilt Ben made. The other is a blanket so enormous and thick that Peter is faintly sure it will smother him. 

But he lets Tony wrap him up. Because he has no other choice. And because a little part of him—one tenacious bit who hasn’t lost hope—deeply wants Tony to fix this for him, and trusts that Tony knows what he’s doing. 

Tony settles onto the couch next to Peter, tossing an arm across the back. His fingertips scratch Peter’s neck, along the knots of his spine. 

“We could watch something,” Tony suggests. “I tend to think watching something after eating aids the digestive process. Gets the systems moving. Sound good? Let’s watch something fun. Let’s watch _Ferris Bueller._ God, that poor bastard. What mother would name their child _Ferris?_ And he’s such a successful kid too. That’s overcoming adversity right there.”

Tony fumbles with the remote. He pulls up the movie. Peter sits in his blanket nest. 

The film starts with the iconic monologue sequence. 

Something in Peter settles seeing it. It’s so familiar to him, he could recite the whole script end-to-end. 

Not now, probably. But usually. 

It itches in his chest. 

Tony hums rather than laughs during movies. A soft noise with his lips pressed together. A light smile.

He seems so calm. At ease. Peter doesn’t get it. Tony is always freaking out, especially when there’s absolutely nothing wrong, but not now. 

Peter can’t make himself speak and Tony isn’t freaking out. That’s weird. 

But maybe it’s good. Maybe. Because Tony acting normal might make Peter’s subconscious feel normal and then everything will click back into place and Peter can stop being so helpless and pissed and nonexistent. 

It doesn’t reboot his subconscious. What it does is make him sleepy. The brush of Tony’s fingers, the familiar cadence of the movie—Peter drifts, and this time, he sleeps. 

He’s shaken awake what feels like hours later. 

He opens a bleary eye. Everything is moving. 

A great mane of braided hair whacks him across the face. 

He sputters. 

“Oh, shit. Sorry. Sorry, baby, just me, joining in on the cuddle sesh. Don’t worry, I changed out of my scrubs first. I know how much you hate being near my dirty work scrubs. Which astounds me, considering Ben saw you sneak a pizza crust out of the trash once when you were a kid.”

She settles next to him on the far side, where a snoring Tony isn’t. 

She wraps her arm around Peter’s waist, strong and lithe and familiar, and Peter _feels_ it. 

It makes his eyes ache. 

He swallows and swallows. He turns to May. He presses a firm kiss to her cheek. 

“I love you too, honey,” she says, poking her nose into his neck. They’ve never needed words to communicate anyway. 

He closes his eyes, warm enough to bake, surrounded on every side with stifling love. 

He sleeps, chasing the sun across the sky, and when he wakes again, he _wakes._

**Author's Note:**

> this was a tumblr request! go follow my tumblr! it’s [here!!](floweryfran.tumblr.com)
> 
> also follow my pinterest!! [here!!](https://www.pinterest.com/frantangreti/)
> 
> also please for the love of god leave a comment or something bc idk what’s up with ao3 but we’re all out here writing and crying at the same time just absolutely miserable bc we get no emails, no reads, no kudos, and i’m starting to be coNCERNED are you all okay?? i mean that with my whole chest i’m not being a jerk for once like i’m genuinely concerned i hope you’re all safe and healthy!! i miss you guys!! come back!!


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